The latest version of Internet Explorer Mobile includes tabbed browsing. The browser supports multi-touch gestures, including pinch-to-zoom as well as tap-to-zoom, although not the Touch API at present. Bing Search is tightly integrated with Internet Explorer Mobile. It can display websites in both "mobile" and "desktop" versions.

Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is included with Windows Mobile 6.5 and Zune HD. Internet Explorer Mobile 7 is included with Windows CE 7. Internet Explorer Mobile 9 is included with Windows Phone. Each version has the same Trident rendering engine as its desktop counterpart, but with additional improvements.

Pocket Internet Explorer was first introduced in Windows CE 1.0, released in November 1996.[2] It does not derive from the Internet Explorer code and was written from scratch for being as lightweight as possible. PIE 1.1 was later released that supported cookies, HTTPS, and SSL.

Pocket Internet Explorer 2.0, released in September 1997 with Windows CE 2.0, added many new features: offline browsing, resizing images to fit to screen, and richer HTML support, including framesets and tables. PIE 3.0, introduced in July 1998 with Windows CE 2.10, added support for JScript and various secure protocols.

Pocket Internet Explorer 4 was the first to support ActiveX, CSS, VBScript as well as further extending support for HTTPS and advanced HTML features. Pocket PC 2002 version of PIE brought limited support for DHTML and XML, and also the ability to browse WAP sites – a feature not present in Internet Explorer for PC, Internet Explorer 6.0 added support for IFrames. The web browser supports FTP, XSLT, cookies and animated GIFs among other features.

On July 8, 2008 at the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft announced Internet Explorer Mobile 6 for their next version of Windows Mobile. Andy Lees, Microsoft's senior vice president of mobile communications business, said that Internet Explorer Mobile 6 was going to be a full version of Internet Explorer 6 on Windows Mobile.[3][4] It was shown running briefly during Microsoft's 2009 CES Keynote on a Palm Treo Pro,[5] and again in an official video for Toshiba's TG01 phone, which has Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor.[6]

On February 15, 2010 Microsoft unveiled its next-generation mobile operating system, Windows Phone.[13] With it, came a new version of the Internet Explorer Mobile browser. New features for the browser included multi-touch gesture support, tabbed browsing, a new UI, smooth zoom in/out animations, and a hybrid rendering engine of the Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 desktop versions.[14] According to Engadget and Gizmodo, rendering speed and quality has significantly improved and was now on par with those of competing mobile browsers based on WebKit.[15][16][17][18]

At Mobile World Congress 2011 in February, 2011, Microsoft unveiled a major upgrade to Internet Explorer Mobile based on the rendering engine of Internet Explorer 9.[19] Like its desktop counterpart, the browser features full hardware acceleration. Changes in this version included moving the address bar to the bottom of the screen and having it present in landscape orientation.[20] Microsoft showed a number of HTML5 demonstrations for the browser. This is the last version supported on Windows Phone 7.

In the Windows Phone Developer Summit in June 2012, Microsoft revealed that the next version of Windows Phone, Windows Phone 8, will come with the same web browsing engine to be used in Windows 8 PCs and tablets.[21] IE10 Mobile will be faster and more secure, with advanced anti-phishing features like SmartScreen Filter to block dangerous websites and malware. With the help of shared core between IE10 Desktop and IE10 Mobile, Internet Explorer 10 Mobile supports a broader range of the HTML5 capabilities (including pointer events [22]) and boosts applications/websites' performance. When it finally came out IE10 Mobile out-performed the Galaxy S III, HTC One S, and iPhone 4S on iOS 6 Beta in the SunSpider benchmark.[23]